EN (English)
䷗
Hexagram 24 of 64
Return
復 · Fù
A single yang line reappearing beneath five yin lines: the winter solstice hexagram. The turning point, described as small, quiet and not to be interfered with.
return
renewal
turning point
the seventh day
- King Wen number
- 24 of 64
- Above
- ☷ Kūn · Earth
- Below
- ☳ Zhèn · Thunder
- Composition
- Earth over Thunder
- Lines, bottom to top
- Solid · broken · broken · broken · broken · broken
- Chinese
- 復 · Fù
The Judgment
Success. Going out and coming in without harm. Friends arrive and there is no blame. The way turns and returns; on the seventh day the return comes. It helps to have somewhere to go.
The seventh day is the book's statement that cycles complete themselves on their own schedule. You do not have to do anything for the light to come back.
The Image
Thunder inside the earth: Return. So the ancient kings closed the passes at the solstice. Merchants did not travel and the ruler did not tour the provinces.
The instruction at the turning point is to stop moving. New life is protected by leaving it alone.
What it means
Fu is the winter solstice. One yang line has come back at the bottom of the figure after hexagram 23 stripped everything away, and the classic treats this as the most important structural fact in the book: decline does not continue indefinitely, because at its extreme it reverses.
The tone is protective. The new line is small and the Image responds by closing the mountain passes, halting trade and keeping the ruler at home. At a turning point the right action is to reduce activity, because a return this early is easy to trample.
The lines grade the act of turning back. Returning from a short distance gets great good fortune, which is the classic's clearest statement that the size of an error matters far less than how quickly you notice it. Returning quietly is good. Returning repeatedly carries danger and, notably, no blame. Returning alone while everyone else continues gets no verdict at all.
Then the top line, one of the harshest in the book. Miss the return, and the loss is not a season but ten years. The window that opens here does close.
In a reading
Return as an answer is favourable and quiet. Something is beginning again, or an error can be reversed now at almost no cost.
The counsel is to go back rather than press on, and to keep the scale of the reversal small and unhurried. Do not launch anything large yet; the light has only just come back. The top line supplies the urgency: this is the moment, and it does not stay open forever.
The six lines
Read a line's text only when the cast made it a moving line. They are listed from the top of the figure down, the way the hexagram is drawn.
-
Six at the top
Missing the return. Misfortune, calamity from within and without. Setting armies marching ends in great defeat, disaster for the ruler; for ten years no campaign is possible.
The one moment the whole hexagram exists to catch, and it has been missed. The consequences run for a decade.
-
Six in the fifth place
Wholehearted return. No regret.
Substantial, self-examining, and not needing an audience for it.
-
Six in the fourth place
Walking in the middle of others, one returns alone.
Turning back without the group agreeing. No verdict is offered, which the commentaries read as the difficulty being the whole content.
-
Six in the third place
Repeated return. Danger, no blame.
Going back over and over. The text names the danger and refuses to assign blame, which is a generous reading of a familiar pattern.
-
Six in the second place
Quiet return. Good fortune.
Turning back calmly, in good company, without drama attached to it.
-
Nine at the beginning
Return from close by. No occasion for regret. Great good fortune.
Noticing the mistake a few steps in. The classic praises this line more warmly than almost any other.
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